I remember a reference to the Brits getting posession of the Falklands/Malvinas in 1833 or there abouts. I also remember asking my father (lo, these many years ago) back in 1982 during the Falkland War how Britain got posession of the Falklands in the first place and he basically summed it up as: "A British frigate showed up on the shores of the Falklands in the early 1800s, kicked everybody off the islands and they've pretty much been owned by the Brits ever since." Keep in mind, this might not be exactly historically accurate; a historian would probably describe the events somewhat differently, but I think actual events were close enough to how Dad described them. I'm gonna look into that soon.

Oh, disclaimer (just in case): Both my father and I are Argentine-Americans, both of whom were born in Buenos Aires (the capital of Argentina, for those of you who don't know). But even though we're Argentine, my father and I are both deeply attuned to detecting Argentine bullsh!t!

Disclaimer No. 2: Oftentimes, when people talk about the Falklands, you can detect where their sympathies might lie depending on whether one refers to the Islands as the "Malvinas" (the Argentine/Spanish name for the Islands) or the "Falklands" (as the Islands are known in the English language). For me, being bilingual, the distinction is irrelevant. "Malvinas" for me is just "Falklands" in Spanish, the same way "gato" is Spanish for "cat." I might refer to the Islands as either "Malvinas" or "Falklands" but that is just a reflection of my mood at a particular moment, not an indication of my sympathies on this issue.

What's going on today with the Falklands looks to me (and I don't doubt it looks the same way to my father as well) like the same old tired jingoism that got Argentina humiliated by trying to take land that she has no right to possess. AFAIK, Argentina has never had posession of the Malvinas since 1833. That's almost 200 years, folks. And at the very same time, all of the people actually living on the Malvinas today are almost unanimous in their desire to stay with the British. That's called self-determination and it's a pretty important concept to all civilized peoples.

And we need to remember, as was mentioned by a previous poster, that what's happening now is the same thing that happened in the run-up to the Falkland war: Argentina's government losing political support because of a bad economy and tries to distract the Argentine public by yelling and screaming how the Malvinas should be returned to Argentina. It didn't work in 1982 and with Argentina not being able to take the Islands by force today, it won't work now.

Yeah, Clinton, because she is a diplomat, *had* to say that she supported dialogue between the two countries, because that's what every diplomat neds to say when you don't want a territorial dispute to turn into a humongous diplomatic incident by appearing to take sides. Some of the Brits may bitch and moan how Clinton snubbed them, but the truth is, she couldn't have done anything else if she wanted to avoid inflaming the situation.

I don't see how Argentina can make any sort of credible claim that the Falklands should belong to Argentina. Screaming about it won't make any difference. And the whole dispute is rendeed moot by the fact that the Falklanders want to stay with Britain. (That whole self-determination thing again.) As long as that remains the case, Argentina should not get the Malvinas.

And I'm an Argentine saying this, so you know I'm being honest.